Ambrosia
by grab bag
Summary: What happened to Marco Polo's passengers/crew when they were forced to take shelter in the underground temple on the mountain, through the eyes of one young sailor. Spoilers for U2:AT.


_Prologue_

The barrels were empty. Every single one was empty, cracked open and scraped to the bottom. When we'd retreated from the floodwaters, climbed in the rain through rivers that swirled around our knees until we were more than half way up the mountain, they were all we'd been told to bring. Every able bodied man was assigned a partner, and every team was assigned a barrel. Marco Polo himself had charged us with guarding them, had especially warned us against opening them. But he did not stay with us. And now there was nothing left—only splintered wood among the broken bodies.

* * *

I don't know who the first of us was to disobey his orders. It might have even been my own captain. It was impossible to tell in the darkness that followed. But I do know when it had happened—a week after the hurricane winds had knocked in the pillars at the entrance of the abandoned temple and collapsed the wall in the middle, dividing our company in two. We'd originally counted ourselves lucky to find the structure on the mountain, to find it dry and habitable underground, at least until the storms blew over. After the great heaving of the waves, greater than any we had ever seen, even the staunchest of sailors among us could stand being ashore, and this place was good enough at first. But once the rubble blocked our exit, the grumblings started.

"What if the Polos don't return, like they said?"  
"Impossible to trust merchants, and foreigners to boot."  
"The younger one Marco, though, the Blessed Khan trusted him. Surely they'll return."  
"It's been far too long."  
"Even if they do come back, we'll starve to death long before they can get us out."  
"Don't think like that. Don't"

I admit I was worried. I was young.  
Well. I am young still. And somehow not.

#

As I said, I don't know who opened the barrels. I don't know who started the fight over whether or not to open them. There were so many of us, men from all thirteen of the ships, and more on the other side of the cave-in, trapped as well. I'd never seen most of the men, and in the darkness I never would. All I know is that someone won out, someone who wanted to know what it was we were protecting, what the Polos had returned from the snow-capped mountains with and had cost them the lives of nearly every man that had gone with them. They had returned stone-faced and thin-lipped, and although it was not a common sailor's place to ask, we could tell that not even our captains would be told. And then we had been sent into the mountains to die for a cargo we could hardly guess at, for we would surely die soon without food, and someone needed to know why.

When the lid was pried off the first barrel, I could not push through the mass of bodies to see what was inside. In the silence, though, I could hear the men at the front talking.

"What is it?"  
"I don't know. It's wet. It's sticky and wet."  
"Did the rain get into the barrels?"  
"No, they're water tight. If there were cracks, this…this would have gotten out, wouldn't it?"  
"It's not gunpowder, then? Let's have a light, see what it is!"  
"It could be honey! Food!"

Whispers rippled among the men, and it was hard to hear the next words, but I strained.  
"But the smoke…our air…"  
"Just a bit, to see. Here, flint."

There were white sparks, far far away beyond the huddled men. Something, it might have been a rag or a twig or a piece of the barrel even, something flared up. There was silence; it was the first light we'd seen in three days.

The silence stretched on. I couldn't see. But I can imagine the looks on the faces crowded around the front of the group. Excitement, in that first flicker. Then confusion. Then anger, boiling anger at the waste of it all.

"What is this shit?"  
"_This _is what we risked our lives for, carrying it up the mountain?"  
"The Polos are out of their heads. This is worthless."  
"What is it? It smells familiar."  
"They crammed the ships full of this nonsense?"  
And at the back of the crowd, people still craning to see in the swiftly dying light.  
"Well? What did they find?"  
"Who cares what it is? Can we eat it?"

The ultimate question. Again, like so much lost in that darkness, I will never know who was the soul brave enough to first dip their hand into the barrel and taste its contents. But they found it edible.

I was shocked that we were so orderly that first time. Once it was discovered that we could eat whatever was in the barrels, there was at first a rush, then forced order by the boatswain of one of the ships. We formed lines by holding hands, long and twining through the dark, and each man took his share, a meager single handful. There was some worry about men returning for seconds before the others had any, but oddly enough this did not prove to be a problem, as every man claimed that his one handful had been plenty.

I understood as soon as the tar-like substance slid from my grubby hands into my mouth. A warmth spread through me as it slipped down my throat, then coolness everywhere. I was no longer hungry, nor thirsty, nor tired, nor cramped or sore or blistered. I felt as new and clean as if I had slept for days on the softest feather beds and silken sheets, things I'd never as much as seen in my life, but heard about and imagined. I was refreshed with more energy I had ever had in my life, not since I was a young boy bursting with curiosity and hope and awaiting my first ocean voyage. That night (or day, for time meant nothing underground) we slept well, comfortable for the first time in days, with hope renewed for survival and rescue.

Upon waking up, though, the hunger was back, worse than I expected. We swiftly grasped each others hands in the dark, hungry and anxious. The line was grumbling around me, but we tolerated it, some even managing to make jokes, for we knew at the end of it was food. One of the men had started calling it Ambrosia, a strange foreign name, food for the gods he said. Not knowing what it truly was, and not caring, the word stuck. Another handful lasted hours, sweet and comfortable.

Then the line again, angry and impatient this time. There was concern for the stores, despite there being enough barrels to line the walls. I ignored the men around me, thinking only of the Ambrosia that awaited me.

That night I lay awake, pressed against a corner among the caved in stones, thinking only of the Ambrosia. I heard and felt other men shifting around me, clearly awake, and likely sharing my thoughts. There'd been no sign of a rescue party, but that hardly mattered now. All that mattered was the Ambrosia.

The first death came during that night. Someone tried to open a barrel while the other men lay distracted from sleep. Whoever it was did not last long, for someone attacked him. I know not who. I could not see the event; no one could. I never encountered the body either. But there was the smell of blood from the far corner of the room, and most of us stayed away.

The next morning (I use the term only out of habit) there was a proper fight, over the size of someone's share I suppose. I stayed away, for even at my peak strength I am still little more than a stripling. But there were more deaths. Those who had not received their Ambrosia that morning were overpowered quickly. I stumbled across one of the bodies in the dark; I felt the leather and wood handle of a knife buried in his back, and the blood seeping out over his tunic. The smell of death was starting to creep in among the darkness. I suppressed a gag.

I began to fear that some of the more brutish and selfish among us would try to kill others, if only to keep the Ambrosia for themselves. When I wasn't waiting for Ambrosia I kept my mouth shut and pressed myself as close to the crumbled stones as I could, wishing to disappear.

That was how I found the crevice leading into the other half of the room, the half that had been made inaccessible to us after the cave-in. It was little more than a gap between two fallen pillar stones, too small for most men. I squeezed through, shifting some of the smaller rocks as I went. Nobody noticed, and likely nobody would be able to follow, or want to.

I stepped down on the other side, and a repulsive but thoroughly familiar stench hit my nostrils. Something soft was at my feet; I reached down and realized it was a body. Under that one was another, and another. The other half of our party, the ones who had been separated from us by the collapse. Dead. All of them.

I picked my way across the room to where I thought the entrance to the temple had been. I felt around the walls and found the staircase we'd taken down into the subterranean shelter, now our prison. Rocks blocked the entire passage and among the cracks I found mud and silt. There would be no escape by repetition.

Turning from the blocked stairwell, I followed the walls for any other means of escape. I bumped into something heavy tucked among the roots of a tree that grew above us. I put my hands out, feeling in the dark. It was a barrel. It was still sealed. My heart leapt.

Working my way around the room, I found a small side chamber with maybe two dozen barrels, most of which had been opened and emptied, so far as I could tell. The only one left had been the one by the roots, forgotten by the now-dead crew. No matter. No one in here would be putting up a fight for it.

I scrambled across the floor for something to open the barrel with. I found a knife protruding from somebody's eye socket, wrenched it out. Cutting through the tar that sealed the rim of the barrel, I pried the lid off. There was that familiar smell, and I could barely stop myself from plunging my hands in and lifting a dripping measure of the Ambrosia to my lips. Warmth, coolness again, and I felt alive. The stink of rotting corpses no longer bothered me. I climbed the collapsed pillars, determined not to waste my time, searching for a possible exit. I stopped. I slept. I craved; I ate. I searched. Nothing. Again.

During my second sleep in the chamber, I was awoken by terrible noises coming through the gap in the rubble. Screams, ripping sounds, and every now and then a gurgle or rattling gasp that ended abruptly. I shivered, but for some reason I cared not. I was strong enough, fed on my own personal supply, to protect the Ambrosia. I ate. No one came through, and after a while, the noises stopped. I slept.

#

I don't know how long I survived on it. Far longer than I should have, by any means. My teeth grew gritty and slick; my skin felt waxy to the touch. I almost thought I could see through the dark, I'd been there so long. Still, I lived. I needed to live. I needed Ambrosia, and life.

But eventually the Ambrosia ran low. I tried to ration it as the barrel's emptiness increased, but I found I needed more and more just to remain sated. I was never full anymore. The hunger was back, only worse. And then the Ambrosia ran out completely. There was nothing left to do but wait, and pray the others who'd stayed behind in the storm came to rescue us. Rescue me.

After that, every time I fell asleep I feared it would be the last time I closed my eyes. Somehow, however, I lived, despite the gnawing pain inside me and the tremors that shook my body with greater and greater frequency. I spoke to myself, long rambling conversations with ghosts and the dead around me. I feared I would go mad long before I died. In desperation, I took the knife I'd used to open the barrel and tried to scrape the edges, between the boards—I needed anything, even a drop to sustain me. Clumsy and weak, barely able to grip it, I gouged my arm. For the first time in weeks I smelled something other than the decay around me—blood, fresh blood from my body, _my _body. I licked at it. The smell was so familiar, but the taste was strange, iron and rust in my mouth, even long after the sweetness of Ambrosia had faded from my tongue.

Suddenly my eyes flew open, a useless gesture. But I'd had an idea, my last fevered frantic idea.

Maybe there was still some Ambrosia left in the other room.

Dripping blood and ignoring it, I crawled, too weak to stand, to the crevice in the rubble that had falsely extended my life. I slipped through the same crack with far more ease, my body emaciated. I tumbled out onto the floor, cut myself on another knife, trailed more blood. I heard nothing in the darkness. Everyone here was dead. Again. I was the only one still alive. My cowardice had saved me for only so long.

The barrels here were empty too, long since empty. I dragged my body over the hundreds that lay dead and rotting around me. For no reason other than to keep moving as long as I could, I headed for the farthest corner of the room.

There was a step here, an alcove. Weakly, I sat in it, nudged the other corpses away. If there had been light, I could have perused the whole room. My strength was slipping away with my blood. It was my mausoleum, this corner, my throne in my kingdom of the dead.

I leaned back against the wall. My body felt cold, far colder than it ever had at sea. I missed the ocean, and the sun, and the laughing of gulls. I hadn't thought of them once since I'd found the Ambrosia, but suddenly there it was again. I imagined the smell of my blood was the salt of the surf, my last labored gasps the cries of seabirds.

My head dropped back. I couldn't be sure whether my eyes were open or not, but it didn't make a difference.

I imagined I could see the sun through the dark.

* * *

_Epilogue_

"Signore Polo, we've removed as many of the salvageable barrels as we could. Any other orders?"

The few surviving members of the expedition had insisted they form a rescue team. Marco had known it was too late; the storms and great waves had kept them stranded with the remaining ship for far too long, and then there had been the matter of finding them. And, knowing the cargo that the men had carried, Marco deliberately prolonged their search, terrified at what they might possibly find.

Based on what he saw around the room, it had been the worst.

"Yes, boatswain. The rubble we cleared to reach this chamber. I want it replaced."

"Signore?"

"You heard me."

"Y-yes, Signore." The boatswain, one of his best men, turned and relayed his instructions to the five men gathered in the other chamber. They arched eyebrows at each other, but dared not argue, not when so many of their fellow crewmates lay dead and grinning blackly at them. Placing their torches back down, they began to stack the rocks, far more neatly than they had been found, trying to instill some order on the chaos of the mass grave.

Marco looked down at the sailor's body, lit by a beam of sunlight shafting down from the hole in the ceiling they'd uncovered and discovered them by. Even in this state, his unnaturally blue skin pulled back against the skull, he had clearly been young, maybe one of the youngest on the crew. The sailor boy clutched a knife in his skeletal hand, and it had given him an idea.

Reaching into a cloth pack, he pulled out a box and a leather-bound journal. Marco removed a vellum page from the book, then opened the box and wrapped it around the golden dagger that lay gleaming inside. He stared at the bundle for a moment, then snapped the box shut and quickly placed it in the arms of the young sailor.

"Signore?"

Marco Polo turned and saw the wall was half finished already.

"One final thing. I'll be right there."

He reached over the man and closed the eyelids. Then he stepped back and returned to his men, climbing through the gap in the rocks they'd left for him.

"Seal it up. And quickly. We still have far to go."

The sooner they put this island and the last evidence of the terror of Shambala behind them, the better.


End file.
